


Will Ich Nur Dich

by coloursflyaway



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, First Kiss, Fluff and Angst, Getting Together, Love Confessions, M/M, Post-Canon, Sleep Deprivation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-04
Updated: 2016-06-04
Packaged: 2018-07-12 06:15:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,753
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7088629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coloursflyaway/pseuds/coloursflyaway
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The only thing Steve remembers almost as well as loving Bucky, is watching him fall. So when Bucky decides to go back under, and Steve loses him a second time, there is nothing left to stop the nightmares, especially not when a thousand things burn on Steve's tongue which he never had the courage to tell Bucky about before.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Will Ich Nur Dich

**Author's Note:**

> Surprisingly enough, the first thing I write for this fandom after seeing Captain America: Civil War, is a long-ass character driven fan fic about Steve, just like I did write about Bucky after Captain America: The Winter Soldier.   
> I'm sensing a pattern here.

„I think going back under is the best thing. For everybody”, Bucky says, and his lips, which surely have almost forgotten how to smile, are curled upwards. He looks calm, almost serene, and Steve cannot tell him about all the nights he dreamt about losing him to the ice, about how he hasn’t dreamt about anything but that since they got back from Siberia. Because he won’t take any decision away from Bucky, especially not this one, even if every step the other takes towards the cryo chamber feels like one away from him. Even if it feels like drowning to watch Bucky’s breathing slow down.  
They have only had a few, short days together, not enough to make up for all the time they have lost, and with a cloud of mist, one, two, three beats of his heart, Steve is alone in his world once more.

“He can’t hear me, can he?”, he asks the doctor, after several seconds, waits for the man to shake his head before he steps closer.   
Although Bucky has only been in there for what feels like the blink of an eye, there are snow crystals clinging to his skin, his eyelashes; he looks peaceful, like he’s dreaming, and for a second, Steve thinks he is going to be sick. There are a hundred, a thousand things he has never uttered out-loud, but neither of them makes it past his lips, what he says instead is something he has said a million times at least, what feels like a million years ago, when he was still just Steve, with the hands of an artist instead of a murderer, a wanted man, and Bucky was fighting a war he couldn’t join.   
He says, “I wish you had stayed.”

 

Night falls as quickly in Wakanda as it does everywhere else, the sun rises again, and Steve knows he doesn’t have to leave and yet does, because he cannot be close to Bucky, at least not right now. He’ll be back, he knows that, because even as a boy, he has never been able to stray from Bucky’s side for too long, but for now, he takes the shuttle and tries not to compare this silence to the one when Bucky was sitting behind him.

 

There is nowhere he needs to go, but a thousand places he is not allowed at anymore, so he doesn’t go anywhere at all and ends up somewhere after all, a vast stretch of land somewhere north of Central Wakanda and not yet near the Mediterranean Sea.   
There is nothing around, no one, so Steve lets the jet land, steps out of it; although it can’t have been more than an hour, maybe two, it feels like the first time he has felt solid ground beneath his feet for a century at least. The air is hot, dry, and Steve sucks it in greedily, lets his eyes flutter shut for a second, before finding Bucky hidden away under his eyelids, still and hardly breathing, allowing himself to be taken so far away from Steve.

He forces them open again, stares so long into the sun that he can feel it burn through him, but not even the millions of billions of watts of sunlight can erase the image of Bucky giving himself back to the ice.

 

He does return, just like he knew he would, after he has watched the sun set and tried to put every thought off his mind, after he has failed and failed and failed again. His head is pounding and his eyes are dry, because he won’t let the tears come, but although the jet can be put on autopilot, he doesn’t, since he cannot give himself a chance to sleep.  
The dreams would come, they always do, and he’d rather suffer for another week than wake up shaking, screaming, because he dreamt of watching Bucky fall once more.

 

When he has arrived back at the palace, every fibre, every cell, every atom of his body is longing to see Bucky, just to make sure that the last few days weren’t a dream, and yet Steve doesn’t give in, without quite knowing why. Maybe because he knows that the sooner he goes to see Bucky, the sooner he has to leave again, maybe because some small part of him is still afraid that what he’ll find there is not Bucky, sleeping peacefully, but an empty capsule and his heart broken once more.

Even so, he doesn’t manage to stay away for long, not when he has been searching for the other for such a long time and feels like he has almost lost him again, not when his brain feels like he put it in a blender, took the remains and wrapped them up in cotton and barbed wire.  
And although Steve knows that he spared no thought to his surroundings when walking next to Bucky that last time, his feet find their way easily, carry him down long, winding hallways until he finds a door that looks vaguely familiar, vaguely terrifying. He takes a deep breath, lungs filling up with air until they are burning, and wraps his fingers around the handle, pushes it down; it feels like he is stepping in another universe entirely instead of just another room, because Bucky is there, as still as Snow White in his eternal slumber. And there are still so many things he needs to say.

It almost feels like a shameful thing to do, and yet Steve locks the door behind him before he walks closer, pulls a chair up so he can sit down in front of Bucky’s capsule, his casket.   
The white mist surrounding the other is unsettling, making Bucky look ethereal, otherworldly, like Steve cannot touch him, won’t touch him ever again. It gets caught in his hair, has settled on his lips like a layer of gloss, and Steve wants to wipe it away, would trade this peacefulness for a scream, a cry in a heartbeat. It’s selfish, but that is what he has always been when it comes to Bucky.   
For a moment, Steve wants to reach out, but in the end, he doesn’t, knowing that he’ll find cold glass and not the warm, living skin he’s looking for.

 

He stays awake for another fourteen hours before he crashes, lets himself blink one time too many, wakes up with a racing heart and his muscles tense, ready to fight and kill and die, if it’ll save him from another dream where it’s not five nameless, faceless winter soldiers who they found dead in Siberia, but just one.

 

Sam and Wanda arrive the next morning, looking exhausted and yet pleased; they saved a boat full of refugees in the Mediterranean Sea, and Steve is glad, even if every smile he sends them tugs at his lips painfully.   
They notice, he can see that, but they know him well enough by now that they just smile back, clap a hand on his shoulder, and let him be.

 

They do, until they don’t anymore, or at least Wanda doesn’t. It’s half past four in the morning and Wakanda still feels to him like an ill-fitting glove, unfamiliar, too much to take in when his mind, his heart are elsewhere.   
Outside, the sun is slowly illuminating the sky, so Steve doesn’t bother to turn on the lights when he stumbles into the kitchen. It’s been three days since he last slept.

It might be why he only notices Wanda after a few seconds, her petite frame surrounded by red sparks, twinkles, which spin and dance around her, her very own starry sky. Steve stops, and Wanda’s sparkles don’t, flicker in and out of existence for another few seconds, before they reach out for him like a living, breathing thing. They feel warm whenever one of them touches Steve’s skin, like the flicker of a flame, a fleeting brush of fingers, and draw him in, although all he wanted was a drink.  
Maybe it’s part of Wanda’s powers that makes him sit down next to her, maybe it’s just that he’s exhausted, heartbroken, that Wanda’s magic tingles on his skin like a lover’s touch might.   
They sit in silence, Steve watching a universe of scarlet and crimson come to life in front of him, until Wanda flicks her wrist and lets her sparkles twirl faster, almost playfully.   
“Sometimes, I still dream about him”, she says quietly, a voice as brittle as the almost-peace her magic has given Steve; her accent is more pronounced when she’s tired, he realises. “My brother. I see him, back in Sokovia, I watch him die and although I have all of this, I cannot do a thing.”

With a single motion of her hand, the universe she has created around them dies, but only for a moment, a second, until it is reborn. Thin tendrils at first, spinning around them, intertwining, until Wanda lets them burst, lets them bloom.   
“But you can. You haven’t lost him, not yet. He came back to you, because of you, and the only thing you need to do is realise that.”   
Wanda looks up at him with wide eyes too wise for her age, and Steve knows she is right and yet it doesn’t change a thing.   
“But what if something happens?”, he asks tonelessly, realises that it’s the first time he has ever allowed himself to say it out-loud. “What if there is no way to fix what they have done to him? What if I’ve found Bucky just to watch him waste away for the rest of my life?”  
Again, there is silence, and Steve watches a supernova explode in front of him, and Wanda says, “We’ll find a way.”

 

They both fall asleep on the kitchen table, surrounded by stars and sparks, and Steve wakes up drenched in sweat, with Bucky’s name on his lips.

 

From somewhere (Steve doesn’t ask, doesn’t dare to), T’Challa gets him a shield. Not the one he lost, missing the deep scratches the vibranium claws have left on it, but a shield nonetheless, which sings a similar tune to him when Steve throws it, catches it again.   
It’s the not the same, but then again, neither is Steve.

 

He spends another hour, maybe two, in the room Bucky is sleeping in, oblivious that every breath he takes while like this breaks Steve’s heart. There are a thousand things he still has to say, and yet Steve stays silent.

 

“Is there anything we can do yet?”, he asks the doctor, knows that he sounds desperate and doesn’t care at all; he hasn’t slept for two days, feels like he hasn’t slept for a year at least. “It’s been weeks.”  
“Not yet”, the woman says, calm like she has been the entire time, professional, useless. “This is unlike anything we have ever dealt with before, there is no telling how long-“  
“I know”, Steve interrupts, because he does. “You’ve been saying this the entire time, _I know_ , and it doesn’t help me at all. And it’s too much to ask, I know that too, but you have to help him, and I don’t mean in three months, or three years, or decades, but now, or at least as close to now as you can get, or God help me, I don’t know what I’ll do.”

 

It doesn’t help anything, just like nothing has helped before, but Steve is too tired to even feel bad about how he treated the doctor later, too tired to feel anything at all.

 

“I miss you”, he tells Bucky the next time he visits. He hasn’t bothered to get a chair for himself this time, because he doesn’t plan on staying long, is standing in front of the casket, as he has come to call the capsule, both hands stuffed into his pockets to prevent himself from reaching out.  
He hasn’t touched the glass yet, doesn’t want to.  
In movies and books, people always talk to their loved once when they are in a coma, hoping they’ll be heard, and yet Steve thinks that the possibility that Bucky might be able to hear him is one of the reasons why there are still a thousand things he should say left.   
“You’d like it here, I think”, he says instead, shrugs. “Better than I like it, at least. Never was a big fan of heat, you know? I hope you know. I hope you-“  
Before he can say more, Steve stops himself, takes a deep breath and lets his eyes slip shut for a second – just a second, though, not more – before he adds, “Stay safe, Buck. I’ll come back later.”

 

He does, but it takes eight days, a mission he most likely should never have gone on in the state he is in, until he returns to Bucky’s room, so exhausted that even Scott is looking at him worriedly. The mission was a success, but only just so, Steve too distracted, too tired to be the part of the team he should be. It’s been more than seventy years since he last felt this useless.   
For a moment, Steve thinks about getting a chair to sit on, but in the end, he’s too tired for even that, just falls down on the floor, leans against a counter and does his best to keep his eyes open, which is so much harder than it should be.   
“What am I doing, Bucky?”, he asks although the other cannot answer, lets his head fall back against the counter. “I’m not Captain America anymore. I’m not just Steve either. I’m no one. Not without you.”

 

He falls asleep right there, crouched down on the floor, still facing Bucky, and for the first time in weeks and weeks, he sleeps, wakes up five hours later, but not screaming, not crying.   
Eyes blinking open slowly, feeling strange, like his body has forgotten how it feels to be anything but exhausted; the first thing he sees is Bucky, and it feels right, like hardly anything has ever felt right before.

 

“You look better”, Wanda says later that day, with a smile that feels like a ray of sunshine. “I’m glad.”  
“Me too”, Steve replies, and is glad when she doesn’t ask why, or how, or what happened, because Steve doesn’t think he’d know what answer to give.

 

Again, he returns to Bucky, because in the end, that is what he always does, what he was made to do. He looks the same, frozen in time, and yet Steve feels a hint of surprise tug at him when he sets eyes on Bucky, like a part of him either can’t believe he found the other, or that he lost him again.   
While he usually stays far away, so he won’t feel the cold radiating from the glass of the casket, Steve now steps closer, even raises his hand; he lets it drop again, though, unable to bring himself to touch. It hurts, especially because he still remembers a time when he would gladly have given an arm for a brush of fingers, a fleeting caress.  
“Do you have any idea what you have done to me, Buck?”, he mutters, wishes he could at least see the blue of the other’s eyes. “Have you ever had any idea?”

There is no answer, and although Steve knows there wouldn’t be one, it hurts. For a second, one horrifying, painful moment, he thinks that maybe it’d be best to get used to it.

 

He falls asleep far away from Bucky twenty-eight hours later, dreams of trying to wake the other up, only to find that his skin is just as cold as the glass around him, shatters as easily as the ice crystals that have sealed his lashes together.

 

“Just tell me.” Steve knows he is standing too upright, is too tense – nowadays, it doesn’t make him look pathetic, but frightening instead, and after the years he has lived with this new body, he should be aware of it by now. He isn’t though, not really, not when his mind is on other things, on therapy, on ice, on Bucky. “Tell me the risks, tell me the odds, tell me every little flaw in the plan, but tell me if there is any kind of hope.”  
The doctor looks conflicted, so in the end, it’s T’Challa who speaks up. “There is”, he says, his accent making the words sound crisp, clean, like the truth. “But, as you said, there will be risks. Big ones, terrible ones, ones you might not want to take.”  
He takes a breath and Steve does the same, just in case he might forget how to do so in a few seconds; this is about Bucky and while Steve knows that he’d gladly walk to hell and back again for the other, he doesn’t know what he’d allow them to do to Bucky.   
“Essentially, what the doctors would have to do is this”, T’Challa says, “HYDRA went and left something in your friend’s mind, the only way to get it out of there is to use the same technique, go back and hope for the best. We found the formulas for three different drugs they used, and we recovered one of the machines from Siberia… it’ll hurt, but it could work. If it doesn’t, though, it could do the opposite as well.”

“The opposite?”, Steve asks, although he is almost certain he knows what the opposite has to be; there aren’t many options anymore.   
“Yes”, the doctor says, her voice as soft, as melodious as T’Challa’s is, but with a graveness Steve has never heard from the other. “There might be a trigger hidden inside of him. We could erase the last traces of what HYDRA has left inside of Mr. Barnes… or we could erase everything but that.”

 

“I can’t”, Steve tell Sam that night, Sam, who has been the best friend anyone could ever has asked for, far better than Steve deserves. “I can’t make that decision, not when it comes to him.”  
They are sitting outside, the air around them hot and stifling; Steve hasn’t slept for almost three days, doesn’t dare to even close his eyes for more than a split second, because he knows, _knows_ , what his dreams will show him, should he let them. Sam is silent, just like he has been since Steve started talking, his lips a thin line and his eyes unreadable. He looks like he isn’t just trying to figure this out, but everything, like with the few sentences Steve has been able to say, he’s bared his entire existence to Sam to examine.

The stars lighting up the night sky around them make Steve think of Wanda, of the darkness she is carrying around with her, but he doesn’t get to follow his trail of thoughts for too long, because Sam says, “I knew you loved him, but I never knew it ran this deep.”  
It’s a truth, _the_ truth, of course it is, and yet the words shock him to the core. He has never spoken them out-loud, not now, and not before the world had changed to one of demi-gods and super soldiers; although it seems like everything has changed, one thing hasn’t: the shame of it, the guilt, the absolute radiance, the warmth, the all-encompassing, star-bright intensity of his feelings.   
Still, Steve says nothing at all, because it would feel so wrong – the first time he admits it cannot be here, cannot be now – just stays quiet and lets Sam continue.   
“I thought it’d be more, I don’t know, nostalgia, maybe. After such a long time, after the war and the ice and all that, I thought that you’d feel guilty, like you owed him, that that was what drove you. Sure, some love mixed into it too, but after all, Steve, even without the seventy years you spent sleeping, there was more than enough time to fall out of love with him.”  
Sam leans back, eyes still unreadable, but his mouth slack, the corners turned downwards. There is a sadness in it which Steve has never seen before, resignation, like there was something Sam was hoping for and now knows he won’t ever have.   
“But you didn’t, did you?”, Sam continues, his lips twitching upwards into a joyless smile. “You never stopped loving him, and you won’t stop either, no matter if he wakes up, if they cure him or if they fail. You’ll love him anyway, because you’re you and he, well. He at least used to be him.”  
The other’s head drops back against the wall so he can look at the stars, and Steve wishes he could wipe the still lingering smile off Sam’s face. It doesn’t suit him.   
“I’d say, go for it”, he adds, almost an afterthought. “Not because of me, not even because of you, but because he seems to have been willing to sleep for another century just for the chance to get HYDRA out of his head, so I think he’d be willing to die for it too.”

 

He goes to see Bucky that night, doesn’t think, just lets his feet take him where his heart has been since they put Bucky under again. The room seems to exist outside of time, the neon light bright whenever Steve enters, the machinery beeping slowly, steadily. It should be comforting, Steve supposes, but if anything, it makes him anxious; they have lost too much time already to let it stop now.   
There are a million things he should tell Bucky, and yet the only ones he can remember are the ones he cannot say, not when Bucky can’t hear him – _I miss you, I love you, I’d die a thousand times to keep you safe._   
Another thing: _Come back._   
Another thing: _Come back to me._

He ends up saying nothing at all.

 

“Can’t we wake Bucky up and ask him?”, Steve asks; he’s so tired that the edges of the things around him seem to blur, his tongue seems too large for his mouth and his thoughts feel almost liquid, ungraspable. “I can’t decide this, I just can’t.”  
There are a few moments of silence – how many, Steve cannot say, because they, too, seem to blur together – then one of the doctors, the one from the day before, nods.   
“Alright.” It’s simple, too simple, Steve knows that even before the next words have left her lips. “But it’s not quite as easy as you’d think, Captain – we need Mr. Barnes to be as close to the state HYDRA used to activate him as possible, which means not quite letting him wake up before administering the first drug. So if we wake him up, it will mean we have to put him back under for at least a month afterwards. Are you prepared to do that?”  
She looks like she expects Steve to say no, to say that he’d rather decide than wait for another month; he nods half a second after she has finished speaking, and wonders just how horrible he has to look for her to assume that.  
“Yes, of course”, he tells her just to make sure she understands, “I am. Please. Wake him up, it’s his decision to make, not mine.”

 

The sun has long since set and Steve’s eyes are drooping, threatening to fall shut, when there is a hand on his shoulder, making him jerk around. It’s Wanda, her eyes soft and her lips curled into the faintest of smiles.   
“Hi”, she greets, and Steve is too tired to answer, just gives her a slow nod. “Just wanted to make sure you’re okay. Are you okay?”  
Steve nods again, hums, and Wanda chuckles, moves in closer; it’s seldom that Steve notices how much smaller she is than him, because so often she feels so much larger than life, but he does now.   
“Are you?”, she asks again, and Steve hums, just because he doesn’t know what to say; he doesn’t know if he is okay, if he is merely tired. Wanda nods, lets her head tip back and looks up at stars, which look different than they did almost a decade ago in Brooklyn; Steve wonders if they looked different in Sokovia too. “I just wonder if you will be able to let him go again when they freeze him, or if it’s going to ruin you. If you will be able to let him go entirely, if everything fails.”  
For a few moments, Steve stays silent, but this is not a question he can answer with a simple nod, a shake of his head. So he opens his mouth, waits another second before he knows what to say, then replies, “I don’t know, Wanda. I really don’t.”

 

They stay another while, until Steve feels like he is about to fall asleep on his feet, then Wanda guides him back inside, gentle hands on his arms, a soft voice talking, even if Steve has stopped listening a long time ago. He wants to protest when Wanda pushes him down on the next sofa they come across, finds a thin blanket and covers him with it, because he knows that he will drift off the second he allows himself to shut his eyes, but there’s no use, he can’t even get his lips to move.

The last thing Steve feels before he falls asleep is a soft kiss pressed to his cheek, the last thing he hears are muttered words in a language he thinks he cannot understand.

 

As predicted, he dreams; as predicted, he wakes up screaming.

 

The next morning comes, and Steve isn’t sure how, isn’t sure if it’s possible, but he feels even more exhausted than he did before the few hours of sleep he got, dead on his feet. Still, he drags himself to the kitchen, pours himself a cup of coffee from the pot still steaming on the counter – chances are that Clint arrived sometime last night, then.  
Steve doesn’t taste the coffee, just gulps it down in as little time as possible, before he leaves for Bucky’s room again. The doctors told him they would wake him up today, and while it will take ten to twelve hours to do so, Steve insisted on being allowed to spend every minute of those right at the other’s side.

 

The machinery whirs and groans as the top of the casket slide back, and for the first time in months, Steve sees Bucky without a misted over layer of glass between them. Ice crystals are glittering in his hair and lashes, making his skin gleam; he looks ethereal and even after all this time, it makes Steve want to scream.  
He doesn’t, of course, just clenches his fists, breathes in deeply, counts the seconds when he exhales again. The doctors are still fussing with the casket, pressing buttons, checking Bucky’s temperature, his heart rate, inject some clear fluid into the other’s arm, and then, suddenly, they step back, all of them, turn around, some looking at Steve, some just leaving, some starting to work on something else entirely.   
It takes a few seconds until he realises what they are trying to do, because he’s tired, oh God, he’s so tired.

Without thinking, Steve steps forward, closer than he ever has before, until he can make out the light scar on Bucky’s chin, the shadow of his lashes, the hint of freckles one only sees if one knows they are there. Steve knows, of course, Steve knows everything there is to know about Bucky Barnes.   
His right hand tries to reach out, like the treacherous thing it is, but he stops it, doesn’t want to disturb the calm serenity that seems to have spun Bucky into its cocoon.   
“How long?”, he asks instead, and it’s only the sound of his own voice that makes him realise he has spoken, the sight of his own hand that shows him he has tried to reach out again. In the end, it’s the shame of it that keeps him from running a finger down Bucky’s cheekbone, from tracing the cupid’s bow of his lips.   
“We don’t know exactly”, the doctor says, “But today. Definitely today.”  
And for now, that’s enough.

 

The doctors come and go, chat, do their tests, drink coffee, and Steve stays. He sits down, but pulls the chair so close to Bucky’s casket that he can watch the snow crystals melt and their water form tiny beads on the other’s cheeks, so close he can watch his skin lose its deathly hue and regain the glow it should always have possessed. It’s always like watching Bucky come to life again and maybe, it’s even a bit cathartic for Steve, who is still so very tired and yet feels better than he has for ages.   
After some time, most of it falls away – the bustle around them, the beeping of the machines, the chatter – until the only thing Steve still hears are Bucky’s soft breaths, the only thing he sees the rise and fall of his chest.   
It feels a bit like waiting for Snow White to wake, and yet Steve doesn’t dare to hope he’ll be allowed to play the prince.

 

It’s night when the first signs of change appear, so slowly and subtly that Steve doesn’t even notice at first. The doctors do, though, start moving around faster, talking louder and making Steve look up for the first time in what feels like another seventy years.  
“Is he waking up?”, Steve asks, his voice sounding dull and lifeless to his own ears, and one of the people in the room, a man in his fifties, nods, then shakes his head just a few seconds later.   
“Slowly, yes, but not yet. You have to wait”, he explains and Steve has to take a deep breath to stop himself from telling the man that he has been doing hardly anything else in the last decade.  
Instead, he turns back to Bucky, who is looking so peaceful still, and wishes he could reach out and hold his hand.

 

It takes another four hours (this time, Steve knows how much time has passed, because the noise around them grows louder and louder, won’t allow him to go back to that peaceful parallel world where it’s only him and Bucky) until the other opens his eyes.   
Steve has long since been banned from his chair, from Bucky’s side, and yet it’s him who notices first, because it’s his eyes who haven’t left Bucky’s face since he saw the first twitch of a finger.   
A breath escapes him, one which seems to carry Bucky’s name and everything Steve ever wanted to say to him at the same time, and he knows that he could rush forward, be the first person that Bucky sees, but he doesn’t. Steve is not important, Bucky is, and so he lets one of the doctors be the first, watches him check the other’s reflexes, his blood pressure, everything else there is to check.

Bucky is moving slowly, like he’s just relearning how to move his limbs, is getting reacquainted with the way his muscles can flex and relax again, how his senses work, and somehow it is frightening, somehow it is everything Steve ever wanted.   
He takes half a step forward without wanting to, knocks into someone who is carrying a tray with different devices Steve isn’t sure he wants to know the uses of. The young man makes a sound, and although it is quiet, it’s enough to make Bucky’s focus shift to where Steve is standing, and it’s horrible, it really is, but the smile that tugs on the other’s lips is the same Steve has known since he was a little boy, crying because of a scraped knee.   
It’s the smile Bucky always had for him, and it’s unfair, putting all these expectations on the other when Bucky is still trying to find back to himself, but he can’t help it. Especially not when the other’s eyes widen slightly, and he mutters, “Steve…”  
It sounds the same too, his voice, the tone he uses, everything, and Steve’s heart breaks once, breaks twice, breaks thrice.   
“Hey Buck”, he says, ignoring the pain of it, smiles, because he knows that that is what he should do. “Welcome back.”

The smile lasts for a second longer, maybe two, and then Bucky’s smile fades, his eyes fall closed again; he must be exhausted, just like Steve.   
“So, am I good again?”, Bucky asks, sounds like he is drunk, like he is drugged, slow and sweet, but hopeful too, and Steve hates to think that he’ll have to wipe away that hope in the matter of a few seconds.   
“Not yet.” The two words are some of the hardest he ever had to say out-loud, and yet he does, because the sooner they get this solved, the better. “There’s… there’s a way, but it’s a risk, a big one, and I wasn’t sure if you’d want to take it. And I couldn’t decide it, not for you.”

He feels helpless, because even if Bucky can decide for himself now, Steve isn’t sure what answer he’d rather get, isn’t sure with which one he could live. Isn’t even sure if he can live with this, with watching Bucky’s face fall like he has been cheated, like he’s woken up in yet another nightmare.   
“They’d have to do the same thing HYDRA did”, Steve starts again, because he’d rather be the one to break the news to Bucky than to watch a doctor do it, someone who hasn’t spent nights huddled together with the other, who hasn’t drawn the slope of his nose, the line of his jaw a thousand times. “Go back into your brain, try to-“  
He doesn’t get to finish though, because Bucky interrupts him, a hint of heat in his blue eyes which Steve isn’t familiar with – it’s a mixture of anger, disappointed hope and desperation, even if hidden behind what Steve supposes is as much warmth as Bucky managed to find within himself.   
“I don’t care”, Bucky says and while he doesn’t look like it, his voice is confident, steady. “I don’t need to know what could go wrong, I want them to do it. Now.”  
“They can’t”, Steve has to tell him, and the words seem to stick to his lips, unwilling to leave, unwilling to be heard. “Not without putting you under again. For at least a month, so you’ll – so you’ll be in the same state as you were when they did it. Activated you.”

For a moment, Bucky stays silent, his eyes empty and dull, before he mutters, “Shit.”  
Mutters, “Put me under.”

 

Just before Bucky falls asleep again, they have one more moment while the doctors are preparing whatever it is they need, and it takes just one look at Bucky’s face for Steve to remember how tired he is, how this has worn him thinner than a war, than aliens and demi-gods and super-serums ever could.   
“It’s gonna be fine, Stevie”, Bucky says, reassuring him although it should be the other way around. For once, it should be Steve, who is the strong one, who comforts Bucky. “They’re gonna fix me and then everything is going to be like before again.”  
There is a smile on his lips and Steve can’t bring himself to say that while they might fix Bucky, he isn’t sure if anyone can fix him anymore. 

 

He falls asleep just a few minutes after Bucky has, unable to keep the exhaustion at bay any longer. It’s as if it has drained the rest of his energy to let Bucky go again, and Steve expects to wake up screaming and crying and with his poor, broken heart beating so fast he can hardly keep track.   
But he doesn’t, not at all.   
Instead, he wakes up six hours later, his neck sore because of the chair he slept in, but his mind is calmer than it has been in months.   
For a few blissful moment his brain is not quite working, lags behind, but then his eyes flutter open and the first thing he sees is Bucky, doused in mist again, those familiar, glittering ice crystals clinging to his lips, his lashes. He looks like he has for such a long time, peaceful, and Steve feels like every breath he has ever taken that has led him to this moment has been one too much.

 

Once more, he takes the jet out to some spot of Earth he has never seen before, the air wrapped around him too warm, too stifling. It feels a bit like drowning, and the moment Steve feels the soil under his feet, no other human being in sight, and still cannot forget that look on Bucky’s face just before he went under, he knows he’s lost.   
Knows that, if Bucky doesn’t make it, if that is the last time he has looked at the other and had Bucky look back at him, he won’t sleep again.

 

When he comes back to T’Challa’s palace, he finds Wanda, finds Sam, ignores both their condolences, their friendly words, at least until he has both of them sat around the kitchen table, a cup of coffee between Wanda’s delicate hands. His own are shaking, although his mind is less clouded than it has been for days, his body seems to have caught up on at least a fraction of the sleep it has been missing.   
“What’s wrong?”, Wanda asks, because she always seems to know when something is troubling him lately, a sixth sense of some sort. “Is it-?”  
Steve nods, looks down at his hands and back up again, wondering how he ever expected this to be any easier than it is.   
“It is. Both of you know what they have to do to- to Bucky, and I just…”, his voice trails off, because it’s near impossible to find the right words, not too harsh and yet truthful enough to make them understand. “Wanda, you asked if I thought I could take it to lose him again, and I thought that maybe, I could, but when he woke up again today… “

He takes a deep breath, although he knows that it won’t change anything; when he looks, his hands are still shaking. “If this was the last time I saw Bucky, then it’s it for me.”  
Half a smile, maybe less still, appears on Steve’s lips, stretching them upwards in a motion his body almost seems to have forgotten about, and Wanda and Sam stay silent, like they can feel that he isn’t finished yet. They are right, he isn’t, instead continues, “I know that I always tell people that Bucky’s my friend, but that’s not true. He’s – I don’t know if there are words for it.”  
It’s the truth, he doesn’t, hasn’t thought this through enough to come up with some way of explaining, so Steve’s voice just trails off for a few moments. Sam and Wanda are both watching him, waiting, and in the end, because there is nothing else he can think of, Steve settles for a memory instead of an explanation, hopes it will be enough.   
“When I was fifteen”, he starts, his voice trembling just like his hands; this is nothing he is proud of and something he hasn’t thought about for years, “I got pneumonia. I almost died, the doctor who treated me had already suggested for my mother to look for a cheap coffin, because my temperature wouldn’t go down. But even when I was delirious with fever, I didn’t cry out for my mother, even though she was the one feeding me soup, the one who sold her grandmother’s wedding ring to pay for my medicine. I cried out for Bucky.”  
There is more to it, of course – his mother’s eyes when he came back to himself, the disappointment and shame, the confessions she made him go to, the way that Steve couldn’t look either her or Bucky in the eye for weeks after that – but he leaves that out, at least for now. Sam and Wanda, they don’t need to know everything. What they need to know is this: “That’s who Bucky is to me, who he’s always going to be to me, and if I have to let him go again, it won’t kill me, but it – I can hardly sleep or function right now, and it’s only going to get worse.”

Steve stops, even if only to gather his thoughts, which still come more sluggishly than he thinks they did a century ago; again, he breathes in deeply, feels his lungs inflate, the flow of his blood quicken. It doesn’t help at all.   
“If that happens, I won’t be of any use anymore, not like I used to be. I’m sure you still remember the last mission I went on. But the world needs us, it needs the Avengers, so I have to know that, if everything goes to shit… well, if it gets even worse than it did already, that you’ll continue it. Find Thor, find Bruce, be there when Tony calls, when the world realises that it needs us after all. Please.”  
Sometime in the middle of his speech, Steve has lost his smile, cannot get it back even though he tries when he looks at his friends, watches their faces – the quiet understanding and pain in Wanda’s eyes, the silent shock and defeat on Sam’s. He’s asking too much of them, Steve knows that, and yet can’t stop, can’t rest until he knows there is at least one thing he won’t leave unfinished.   
“Please”, he repeats, and both of them nod, Sam first, Wanda just afterwards, holding out a hand, red sparks dancing across her palm.  
Steve takes it, feels her pulse against his fingertips.

 

“Another thing”, he tells Sam after Wanda has left. “Sam, when – I want you to take my shield. My title. The world, it wants a Captain America, someone who’s larger than life, who’s as impossible as they think I am, and if I can’t give them that anymore, please, promise me you will. If not forever, then at least for a time, until you’ve found someone better. It was never about me after all.”  
He gives Sam what feels like the last smile he has the strength for, but for the first time, his friend doesn’t smile back, just looks at Steve with dark, unreadable eyes, replies, “You have no idea, have you? It was always about you.”

 

Clint sends a postcard from Honolulu, signed by the entire family, and it makes Steve’s heart feel a little bit lighter to know that there is some other world out there as well, a happier one.

 

“Maybe you should get out there again”, T’Challa tells him over a cup of too-strong coffee; like this, when Steve hasn’t slept for almost fifty hours, it’s hard to imagine the other as royalty, easier to see the warrior in him, the predator. His eyes are dark, unreadable, but so different to Sam’s, which always seem to hold a spark of warmth, of compassion. T’Challa might be kind, but he has long since learnt to hide it. “Find a new purpose, or rather, rediscover the one you have lost.”  
“It’s not that easy”, Steve tells him, because it’s easier than the truth, that it is impossible. “He wasn’t- he isn’t a purpose.”  
“Then what is he?”, T’Challa leans forward, lips parted and his eyes still cool, but shining with curiosity, “If he isn’t a purpose.”

A friend, is what Steve wants to say in that first second after the other has asked, because it is the answer he is used to giving. But it isn’t the truth, at least not more than a fraction of it and he’s tired, too tired.   
“It’s complicated”, Steve answers instead, takes a moment to think. “If I think about my happiest moment, it’s with Bucky. The saddest, with him. My biggest hope, my worst fear, it’s all Bucky. When I woke up, after the ice, I thought I had to learn how to just be me, how to cut off every part that Bucky left with me, but I couldn’t. There would not have been enough left, if I had. So whatever that is, it’s what he is to me.”  
Just as he has ended, Steve realises he isn’t looking at T’Challa anymore; he looks up immediately, not wanting the other to think he is ashamed, even if a part of him still is.

“Ah”, the king replies, sounding like he has figured out all of Steve’s secrets at once. “ _Isithandwa_. It’s what we call it here.”  
“What does it mean?”  
“A lover.”

 

It’s a few hours later, when the sun is about to set, when T’Challa asks, “Does he feel the same?”  
Steve doesn’t understand what the other means for second, maybe two, because it is something no one ever asked him before – if he’s happy about that or not, Steve cannot say.   
“I… I don’t know. I don’t think so. But when we were still in Brooklyn, I would never have dared to ask. The times were different, it could have ruined everything. And if he had felt the same… I would have tried to make it work, of course, but I don’t know if I could have.”  
“But if you never asked, how can you know?”  
Steve can’t help, he has to chuckle, even if he understands – the others have never gotten to know Bucky how he used to be, how he really is, they just know the haunted, broken version HYDRA has turned him into.   
“Have you ever known someone who is so much better than you will ever be? Not just a good person, someone you aspire to be, but someone who is so utterly _good_ that when you look at them, you expect them to glow?” Steve smiles, not at T’Challa, but at the memory of Bucky coming home from the docks, his hands and face dirty, but his smile so bright it almost hurt to look at him. “That is what Bucky used to be. It’s hard to see that now, I know, but that’s what is still hidden inside him. He changed during the war, after that, but deep down, he’s still Bucky, and no matter what he has done, he’s still more than I could ever deserve.”

 

T’Challa lets the servants bring some kind of liquor Steve has never seen before, which tastes like cinnamon and anise seeds and something Steve can’t place; it doesn’t get him drunk, but Steve still drinks glass after glass, wishing the sharpness of the alcohol could wash away the guilt, the pain, everything but the love.

 

“Tell me everything”, Steve tells the doctors in front of him, ignoring the glass of water one of the servants has set down in front of him. “And I mean everything, not just the nice bits, not just the horrible bits either. Everything. I need to know what you are doing to Bucky.”  
A few seconds pass in which the doctors look at each other, or down on their papers, and Steve is about to ask again, when one of the doctors looks at him directly, asks back, “Are you certain you want that?”  
Which means it is worse than what Steve is expecting, which makes it hard to nod, to look the man in the eye and mean it.   
“Yes. All of it. I need to know.”

 

It is worse than he expected, and yet Steve doesn’t regret it for a second once they have stopped talking, even if his hands are shaking worse than before and his mouth is dry although he drained the entire glass of water. If they are doing all that to Bucky, it’s the least he can do to know what the other is putting himself through.

 

That night, he passes out on one of the couches on the patio, wakes up not screaming, but breathing heavily, fingers clutching a blanket he cannot remember getting for himself, dried tears making his lashes stick together. He can’t remember what he was dreaming, but he doesn’t have to; his racing heart is telling him everything he needs to know.

 

As soon as he has calmed down enough, he goes to see Bucky for the first time since they woke the other up, lets his feet carry him the way they wanted to walk ever since stepping out of the room. It’s familiar still, feels a bit, just a little bit, like coming home when Steve steps through the door, closes it behind him.   
The sound of the machines beeping and whirring calms him down a little, makes Steve breathe easier, and before he knows it, he has stepped forward, so close that he can feel the cold radiating from the glass of the casket, like one more barrier between them. And although he could never bring himself to do it before, Steve now reaches out, presses his flat hand against the glass.

It feels like he imagined it would, cold and cruel, and all of a sudden, the tears come. After months, after more than that, there is suddenly nothing Steve can do to hold them back any longer. Because after all they have been through, after the two years Steve has spent hoping and praying, he might lose Bucky after all, might have to watch him fall once more.   
His fingers curl, as if trying to scratch the glass, and vaguely, Steve is aware that his tears are wetting the glass, his skin, but he cannot bring himself to care, just like he cannot bring himself to care that someone might enter at any moment, could see him like this. Because Bucky might die without knowing that to Steve, he still was the best, the most important human being on this Earth, and in that moment, it feels like more than Steve can take.

 

He falls asleep and wakes again, no blanket wrapped around him this time, tears dried on his skin, but his breathing steady, slow, his mind foggy with what is left of his dreams instead of clear with the last traces of a nightmare. His back aches, but it’s only when Steve has managed to crack open his eyes that he realises why – he’s pressed against the casket, Bucky sleeping inside, next to him for the first time in almost a hundred years.

 

When he gets down to the kitchen, Wanda is already there, using a tendril of scarlet sparks to stir her coffee, but looking up at him when he steps into the room. The sparks falter in their movement, but only for a second.   
“You look…”, she starts, narrows her eyes for a second; her magic picks up its pace, stirs faster. “Better. Almost good, I’d say.”  
“Thanks.” It’s the only thing he can think of to say and it seems to be the right one, too, because Wanda smiles, uses another tendril of bright sparks to pour Steve another cup of coffee.   
“I’m practicing”, she explains, flushing just a little bit. “Clint suggested it, something to get me more used to it. Little tasks, so I’ll learn to control it, before I go and focus on the big things. It sounded like a good idea to me.”  
“As it does to me”, Steve replies, catches the cup, which is on the verge of tipping over, only spilling a little bit of coffee. “Is it working?”  
“I think so, yeah. Might take a little longer, but yeah, I think it does.”

 

He takes Wanda out with the jet that afternoon, watches her eyes light up when they get out somewhere neither of them has ever been, the soil soft beneath their feet and the air warm, fragrant.   
“Is this where you have been going?”, she asks, still looking around and not at Steve. “We’ve all been wondering.”  
“Kind of”, Steve admits, takes a few steps away from the jet, letting his eyes slip shut. “Not here, but just…somewhere. It has been a long time since I just went somewhere without having a mission, or a task to finish. It feels good to just let go for a few hours, try and not think about everything that is going on.”  
“Like Bucky?”, Wanda asks, her voice innocent and her magic picking up a pretty, polished stone for her, placing it right in her outstretched palm.   
“No”, Steve says, tips his head back to enjoy the warmth of the sun on his skin, closes his eyes and still sees it behind his eyelids, orange and red. “Not like Bucky. Just like everything else.”

 

When night comes, Steve allows himself to go back again, this time taking a blanket, a pillow. Bucky looks like he did when he left him, and Steve lets his fingers brush across the unfeeling glass, wishing it was a strand of hair beneath his fingertips, warm skin.  
“Two more weeks, Buck”, he says although the other can’t hear, although there are still a thousand other things he should say instead. “I’m not sure if I am more excited or more scared.”  
He sighs, puts the blanket, the pillow down right next to the casket, runs a hand through his hair. “I miss you. I thought it would get easier with time, Buck, but it doesn’t. I don’t think it ever will. So if you ever felt even a fraction of what I feel for you for me then you’ve got to come back. Please.”  
There is no answer, no twitch of Bucky’s fingers, no fluttering of his lashes, and Steve sighs, defeated by a hope he knew would be disappointed.

For a moment, he wants to tell Bucky everything else, the words already on the tip of his tongue before he swallows them down, like he did so many times before.   
“Goodnight”, he says instead, presses his hand flat against the glass. Back in Brooklyn, he’d sneak one last glance at Bucky’s face before turning around and doing his best to sleep, and it feels similar now, when he tears his gaze away and lays down on the floor, wrapping the blanket around his shoulders and hoping that Bucky’s presence will be enough to lull him to sleep again.

 

He sleeps and dreams and wakes, but not crying, not screaming, just with his hand pressed against the glass, fingers curled against it ever so slightly.

 

The next weeks pass and they pass easier than any Steve can remember. T’Challa gets the servants to put up a makeshift bed next to Bucky’s casket; either he forbids any questions about it directed at Steve or everyone at the palace has noticed Steve’s infatuation by now and has drawn their own conclusions. And for the first time in months, he sleeps, not just occasional hours in between of too long periods of being awake, but sleeps whole nights away, wakes up feeling not good, but better.   
It’s all Bucky, he knows that, and while he still sometimes takes Wanda out to see different parts of Wakanda, he spends most of his time with Bucky, realising that they might be running out of seconds, minutes, hours together.

 

“I don’t want it to end like this”, Steve tells Bucky in what could be the last night they ever spend together, wonders for a moment what would have been different if he had known what would happen before he watched Bucky fall down to what should have been his certain death. If he would have told Bucky how he felt or if he would have preferred it for the other to die while still thinking the best of him.   
Even now he isn’t sure if he’d find the courage to say those words out-loud if he had the chance.   
“I know that if you- if you don’t make it tomorrow, there will be a trillion things I will wish I had done differently, but right now, I just… I don’t want to tell you something and know that you won’t hear it. I don’t want the first time I say something to be when you are unconscious, even if I might end up regretting it. But if I ever say it, it should be special. Because you are special and this is the most special thing I have ever felt.”

Steve sighs, leans down so he can press his forehead against the glass, imagining that he can feel Bucky instead, his breath against Steve’s skin, the thrum of his blood beneath it.   
“So if you want to hear it, you have to wake up tomorrow, Buck. Not him, just you. And I’ll give you everything, I mean _everything_ , you want.”

 

“We will start now”, one of the doctors says, and Steve doesn’t look up, doesn’t even show that he has heard, because he is trying to catalogue every breath Bucky is taking. So he doesn’t see what they inject the other with, only sees the drug’s effects – it takes a minute or two, then Bucky starts moving, little twitches of his fingers, the sinews of his neck straining, his muscles tensing. It looks like he’s in pain, and Steve feels like screaming, feels like rushing forward to hold Bucky, let him know that he is not alone.   
But it still isn’t about him, it’s about Bucky, so he stays, puts his hands on his thighs and squeezes until he can feel his knuckles, his flesh, ache.

One of the doctors tries to tell him something, but Steve doesn’t hear it, just tightens his grip, counts his breaths, inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale. Without noticing, he matches the pattern to the pace Bucky’s chest rises and falls, one more way to get them closer.

 

The second drug is injected, makes Bucky arch up from the chair within seconds, his whole body straining, tense, the veins on his hands sticking out, his teeth clenched. He looks like he is in more pain than Steve can imagine, and it hurts just like Steve knew it would the entire time, so he forces his muscles to relax before he breaks the armrest of the chair again.   
Breathes in.   
Breathes out again.   
And watches Bucky do the same.

 

An hour passes, maybe a little bit more, and Same comes to visit him. There are scarlet crescents on Steve’s palms he has left there himself, splinters from the armrest he has broken into pieces nudged into that tender bit of flesh between his thumb and forefinger, a few smudges of blood across his jeans, but the other man doesn’t seem to notice, just hands Steve a glass of water, sits down next to him.   
“How are you holding up?”, Sam asks, like it is nothing, like they are doing this every day, and Steve is eternally grateful for it, because he doesn’t know how many more concerned glances he can take.   
“I don’t know”, he replies truthfully, doesn’t even try to make his voice sound cheerful, confident, like he did with all the servants, all the doctors and nurses who asked the same thing before. “Better than he is, I think.”  
As if on cue, Bucky tenses again, the twenty-seventh time since they gave him the last injection, and Steve can’t help it, his eyes fix on Bucky’s form, his fingers clench, nails finding the wounds they have already left and digging in deeper, harder. Bucky lets out a groan, a choked off sound that echoes in Steve’s mind with every breath he takes, every beat of his heart. 

The fit passes as quickly as it came, and it’s only when Steve sees Bucky slump back into his chair that he feels his own muscles relax, that he notices that Sam isn’t watching Bucky, but him. His eyes are still dark, but concerned instead of warm, his fingers curl around Steve’s gently, prying them back to look at the damage he has caused, blood making the slide of their skin slicker, easier.   
“You know”, Sam mutters, “I’m not sure if you are better off than him after all.”

 

For the third, the final injection, they send him out of the room, and even if Steve knew this would come, it’s almost impossible to make his body move, to take step after step after step, knowing they will lead him further away from Bucky.   
It feels like something he has done far too often already.   
And yet, he lets them close the door behind him, watches as they close the blinds to keep him out completely, and falls down on the next chair he can find – made of metal and plastic, something he can bend, but not break that easily – and fixes his eyes on the spot of glass he knows Bucky to be behind. His hands find the armrests, the wounds on his palms stinging comfortingly as he squeezes, and for the first time in far too long, he starts to pray.

 

Two hours pass, which feel like two eons instead, and there are no sounds coming from the room, no clanking of metal against metal, no beeping of machinery, no shouts, no screams.

 

It takes three hours and forty-two minutes until the doors open again, one of the doctors Steve must have snapped at more times than he can count in the last few days peeking out, dark bags under her eyes. But she nods, and Steve can feel his heart pick up its pace, his breath suddenly coming in huffs.   
Before he knows it, he’s up, leaving red smudges on the polished silver of the chair’s armrests, his whole body complaining when he reminds it about its original function. >  
“How is he?”, he asks, lips and tongue stumbling over the words. “Did it- was it-?”

He cannot say it out-loud, not when he might get an answer that could crush his world within seconds, but the doctor understands him anyway, looks up at him with tired eyes.  
“We do not know yet”, she says, the syllables slurred, smeared, making Steve almost feel bad for keeping her here. “We have to wait for him to wake up.”  
“How long?”, he asks, and she shakes her head, dark curls bouncing.   
“A few minutes, hours, days, everything is possible. We have no experience in this.”  
Which makes sense, of course, but doesn’t help Steve the least. Still, he nods, does his best to give her a smile.   
“Of course”, he answers, and doesn’t mean, then adds, truthfully, “Thank you. For everything.”

 

In a corner of the room, Steve finds the blanket and pillow he left, and it seems fitting to take them to his chair with him, ignoring the splintered wood when he wraps himself into the blanket, puts the pillow behind him. It’s soft, but does nothing to calm him down, because Bucky looks like he did all those months, not a single change to make Steve believe that it worked.   
And he cannot even reach out, feel Bucky’s skin under his fingertips, not yet, maybe not ever again.

 

It doesn’t take minutes, but still might take hours, might take days when the first doctors start to leave, the one who opened the door for Steve the first to go. There is hardly anything more they can do, one of them explains to Steve – Bucky’s vitals are good, like they should be, and this is something no one knows a procedure for anyway. They have cuffed Bucky to the bed, just in case.  
One of them stays behind, dozing off in a far off corner of the room, giving them what Steve thinks might be as much privacy as they can.   
Steve is grateful, is terrified, is still and undeniably in love.

 

At first, it’s just a twitch, a groan; Bucky arches off the bed, cold sweat making his skin glisten, and every time, Steve hopes and fears, isn’t sure if this is a good sign or a bad one, if a curl of his lips means Bucky is getting better or if it’s an involuntary reaction of his facial muscles, if a bitten-off screams should make him worry, or if none of this means anything at all.

 

“Steve”, Bucky mutters, his voice hoarse and yet achingly familiar, the sounds smeared together until they are almost impossible to understand, but Steve’s head shoots up anything, the world spinning for a few moments, until it focusses on Bucky again, always on Bucky.   
It’s early morning, and the doctor was right, it has taken hours, almost a day.   
“Buck”, he breathes out and only realises that he’s been moving when he stumbles, the blanket still wrapped around his legs. Not that it matters, not that anything matters, because Steve doesn’t need to ask the other questions about the childhood they shared to know that it has worked, that the person in front of him is all Bucky Barnes, not a trace of HYDRA left inside of him.   
So he rights himself, almost overhears Bucky chuckling softly. It’s a soft, frail sound, like Bucky is just remembering how to laugh, and yet it’s the most beautiful thing Steve has ever heard.

“Easy there”, Bucky mutters, while Steve blinks back tears, gets rid of the blanket so he can come closer. “’m not goin’ anywhere.”  
As soft and worn out as his voice sounds, there is still amusement lingering in it, hidden in between the shallow breaths and missing letters; it’s enough to make Steve’s heart feel lighter.   
“I don’t think you could, even if you wanted to”, he answers, because it’s this or tearing up, no middle ground left.   
“Fine by me.”

Bucky’s eyes slip shut for a second, only open then when Steve is right there by his side; when he looks up, their eyes meet, and the world could shatter and crumble and fall around them, Steve wouldn’t notice. Because Bucky’s eyes are as blue as they always were, soft and relieved and familiar, and Steve has never known how heavily a century of guilt has rested on his shoulders until Bucky takes it away with only a single glance.

“Hi”, he whispers, because he has to say something and yet can’t say the thousand things burning on his tongue; Bucky smiles, looks like he feels at least a fraction of the joy bubbling up in Steve’s throat.   
His lashes are painting dark shadows across Bucky’s cheekbones, no ice crystals making them glitter, and although he has spent months watching, there is still a sense of novelty when Steve allows his eyes to trace the sharp line of Bucky’s jaw, the cupid’s bow of his upper lip.   
“You want me to-“, he starts, gestures to the handcuffs when his brain is distracted mid-question by the fact that they are talking, that he has Bucky back. He doesn’t look away from the other’s face for a second, wouldn’t know how to.   
“Yeah, please.” Bucky smiles and Steve is fairly certain he has been smiling the entire time, beaming, glowing, because there is no way he could keep all of this pure, unaltered happiness inside of him without bursting.

He reaches down and it’s a spark that shoots through him, a jolt of something warm and fierce when they touch, just a brush of Steve’s fingers against Bucky’s arm and yet enough, more than that even. It’s definite proof, the one thing Steve has been craving for those last months, and to finally feel Bucky’s skin warm and alive, almost turns _enough_ into _too much._  
Again, he breathes out the other’s name, hardly notices, because it has turned into his form of prayer months ago, but Bucky does, curls his fingers ever so slightly, causing them to brush against Steve’s arm. There are a thousand things Steve should tell him, starting with _I missed you_ to _I would give my life to take away even a second of what you have been through_ , not now, but someday, but then Bucky moves his fingers, lets them travel up Steve’s arm, a feather-light touch, says, “I know.”

A moment passes, and Steve thinks that time must have slowed down around them, stretching seconds into minutes, because it seems that eons pass before he understands what the warmth of Bucky’s voice is trying to tell him, the affection shining out of bright blue eyes means. And yet, when Bucky’s fingers have reached the base of his palm, he asks, “You do?”  
Even to Steve, his voice sounds breathless, disbelieving, hopeful; the words leave a strange taste in his mouth, make his heart swell until he is sure he won’t be able to draw another breath without making it burst, because Bucky could mean so many things and yet can only mean the one secret Steve has always carried between them.

 “I do, yeah”, Bucky affirms, looks like he is willing to say it another hundred times if that is what Steve needs to believe him. “I always did, since we were boys, but I couldn’t have done anything, not back then. You were always the optimist of us, Stevie, not me, and I knew the risks… I couldn’t have put you through that. Me, yes, without a second of doubt, but not you.”  
He’s smiling, Steve notices that what might be a moment too late, smiling and trailing the tips of his fingers up, up, up, callouses catching on the sensitive skin of Steve’s inner wrist. Hardly a touch and yet enough to make Steve shiver, because he has longed for this not only for a few months, but for a lifetime.   
“Back then, I always hoped you’d forget. Find a decent girl, settle down, the whole shtick. But when you came to Bucharest, I just… you looked the same, and I knew. I knew that nothing had changed, because nothing had changed for me either. And the only risk left was me.”

There isn’t a hint of pain in Bucky’s voice, he sounds like he is just stating a fact like any other, and it makes Steve _ache_ , even if his heart is fluttering with every word the other speaks, growing hopeful, warm. It’s mending, he thinks.  
Bucky’s fingertips brush across his wrist again, like he’s trying to feel his pulse, and Steve can feel his blood pumping, racing, as if it’s trying to give Bucky the answer he hasn’t been able to form with words yet. And maybe Bucky understands, because he lets his fingers rest where they are, smiles up at Steve with clear, blue eyes.   
“But I’m not a risk anymore.”

It’s an invitation, it has to be, and yet Steve cannot act on it, too stunned to make his muscles obey for far too long; if what Bucky is saying is true, they have lost too much time already, far too much time.   
“Stevie?”, Bucky asks; his voice is still hoarse, too quiet, but not scared, maybe even a little bit amused, his fingertips painting circles on Steve’s skin. And it’s that last push he needs – the nickname, the smile, the fact that Bucky doesn’t doubt, that the affection in his eyes doesn’t dim, doesn’t waver.   
Pulling his hand away from Bucky’s touch is hard, but he manages, opens the cuff around the other’s wrist with shaking hands because he still cannot find the words; there are a hundred, a thousand things he is allowed to say now, and yet he can’t. Instead, he laces their fingers together, squeezes until he can feel Bucky’s pulse against his skin.

Although Steve thought he wouldn’t be able to look away from Bucky’s face again, from his painfully, beautifully familiar eyes, the quirk of his lips, he glances down at their hands, the pattern their fingers paint together. It feels right in a way nothing ever has before.  
Again, Steve looks up and their eyes lock, his heart picks up its pace until Steve cannot tell one beat from the next anymore, because there is something hidden behind the blue of Bucky’s eyes that Steve knows he wears too often: hope, affection, longing, but most importantly, the absolute certainty that nothing could ever change those feelings.   
And they have waited long enough, too long, so Steve refuses to think, just raises Bucky’s hand to his lips, presses a kiss to the other’s knuckles and blinking back the tears he won’t allow to fall. Bucky’s skin is soft against his lips, warm, and his eyes brighten, even as he sighs Steve’s name, something so very close to a plea.   
“Come here”, Bucky adds, like an afterthought he never dared to speak out-loud before, scoots back a little, and there is nothing, absolutely nothing Steve would not do for him.

He doesn’t let go of Bucky’s hand as he gets up, his heart aching just a little when he realises that Bucky is tightening his hold on his fingers even further, is as unwilling to let him go as Steve is. They could have had this for such a long time, Steve thinks, but banishes the thought within a second, because it doesn’t matter which opportunities they have missed, what happens is that Bucky is here now, that, as unbelievable as it still sounds, Bucky is his just as well as Steve has always been Bucky’s.

Their hands still locked even when Steve climbs onto the mattress, makes Bucky laugh by plopping down on it most inelegantly, and the bed isn’t make for two grown men and yet they make it work somehow, bodies aligning until they are facing each other, not touching, but only a finger’s breadth between them.   
This is the happiest anyone can ever have been, Steve is certain of that, and up close, Bucky looks even more beautiful. There are so many things Steve has to say.  
“Hey”, Bucky mutters, being the one to start talking after all, his lips a little too pale still, and yet turned up into a smile Steve wants to kiss off them. He doesn’t, though, not yet.   
“Hi”, he answers instead, whispers the word out like a secret. “Glad to have you back.”  
“Glad to be back.”

A few moments, be they long or short, pass in silence, Steve soaking in the closeness, letting it wrap him up whole, before he asks, “And what comes now?”  
Because it’s up to Bucky for a hundred thousand reasons, always has been, and maybe Bucky knows that too, because he doesn’t seem surprised the least, only squeezes Steve’s fingers.   
“I can’t say for sure”, Bucky starts, a twinkle in his eyes that Steve has seen before, but never directed at him. “But I was hoping for a kiss, at least.”  
The words make the breath hitch in Steve’s throat, make him wonder just how long he has been waiting to hear those words exactly, but Bucky is looking at him expectantly, that twinkle still in his eye, and there is no time to consider, just enough time to act.

And Steve gives his answer in the only form he knows how to, leans in and thinks that Bucky might be doing the same; their lips meet, and it’s not like it is in the movies they used to watch as boys, sneaking into the cinema when doorman wasn’t looking. No sparks, the world neither starts nor stops spinning, there’s no fireworks, just them, their fingers intertwined and Bucky’s pulse racing, the other’s lips soft and warm, moving slowly against Steve’s, exploring.   
Bucky’s breath warm against his skin, Bucky’s teeth nipping, teasing, Steve’s eyes closed so he can _feel_.   
Steve’s heart beating in the other’s chest and for the first time, belonging there.

 

“I still have to tell you so much”, Steve mutters into Bucky’s hair afterwards – after a dozen kisses, a hundred shared breaths, after a lifetime. “At least a thousand things.”  
They are curled up in the bed, Steve’s arm around the other’s shoulders, Bucky’s resting heavily on his waist, fingers tracing up and down the ridges of his spine, not stopping when he hears Steve speak.  
“Me too”, Bucky answers, shifting slightly so he can look up at Steve, his eyes blue and half-lidded, beautiful. “At least twice as many. But Steve…” Again, he shifts until they are eye to eye again, Steve missing the tickle of hair against his chin already, the knowledge that Bucky can feel the heart beating in his chest. “I know them already. And I love you too.”

**Author's Note:**

> In case you want to say hi, send me a prompt, or tell me something nice, you can find me on Tumblr here:  
> [X](http://www.coloursflyaway.tumblr.com)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [我只要你](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11846100) by [inasmiles](https://archiveofourown.org/users/inasmiles/pseuds/inasmiles)




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